


and now i´m picking up the pieces (of my broken heart)

by vicbartons



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M, and liv just needs the both of them to figure out their mess because she misses her family, he definitely is going to need some after this sl is done, robert sugden needs therapy, so does aaron, that´s just a fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:47:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vicbartons/pseuds/vicbartons
Summary: after robert tells aaron about his one night stand with rebecca, aaron kicks him out. months after the breakup, robert, liv and aaron try to pick up the pieces.





	1. Robert

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: "how long has it been?"

“How long has it been?”

5 months, 3 weeks, 2 days and almost 13 hours. He wasn´t going to tell Julia that though, that he was still counting. That he still hoped that at some point he´d be able to stop the clock.

It would just make him look pathetic and desperate.

Not that that wouldn´t be true, but they had only known each other for about 15 minutes and the fact alone that he was spending his Friday morning sitting on a dark brown leather couch in a small cosy room, surrounded by bookshelves and with a pillow in his lap; instead of lying in his bed, hiding under the covers and nursing the rest of last nights whiskey, made him feel vulnerable enough. Thank you very much.

He most certainly wasn´t ready to let her in on the full extent of his desolation and self-hate. At least not yet. 

Maybe if he kept staring at the clock on the wall behind her he could somehow will time to go by faster. 

"6 months,” he said. 

Robert looked at her then, trying hard to act somewhat nonchalant. His voice was void of emotion, but his hands were gripping the pillow tightly by its edges. So tightly that his knuckles turned white. If nothing else, Robert had gotten good at hiding his real feelings again over the last couple of months.

 

_“I´m doing fine.”_

_"No, I´m not drunk."_

_“Yes, I´m eating.”_

_“You don´t have to worry about me.”_

The lies rolled off his tongue far easier these days. 

Right after, they hadn´t. 

Aaron had taken a sledgehammer to all of the walls Robert had carefully built over years, but at least he had still been a closed book to everyone else. That was until everything had fallen apart and he hadn´t been able to keep up the pretence any longer. Hadn´t had the strength to play tough. Not that he had talked to people about it, but the dark circles under his puffy eyes and his ashen complexion had been enough of a giveaway for anyone who had still cared enough to notice.

 

Julia gave him a kind smile and nodded. She was maybe in her late thirties, sitting across from him in a matching brown arm chair, her legs crossed, her long blonde hair in a braided bun on top of her head. It reminded him of Liv.

God, Robert missed Liv.

 

“And how would you say you´re coping with the separation?” Julia´s voice was soft and gentle. She sounded like she actually cared, not as if she was only pretending to be interested, because making him feel welcome and getting him to open up about things he didn´t want to share was her job. Not the way Diane sounded when she called once in a blue moon.

Robert let his eyes wander across the room, unwilling to look the therapist in the eye in fear of being found out and psychoanalysed, until they settled on the window. It was slightly fogged by the cold November air, little drops of condensation making their way from its top down to the windowsill, but he could still make out the row of cars driving by down below. People driving to work or bringing their kids to school. Functioning, well-adjusted adults, who had managed to get out of bed that morning and were able to go about their day without a pit in their stomach, without a constant feeling of dread.

It was so much easier to focus on them than to look at the counsellor in front of him, when he didn´t feel like he deserved the sympathetic look in her eyes. 

 

"I´m coping,” he answered.

It was bullshit. Obviously. 

Sure, nowadays he held out on opening a new bottle of alcohol until the early hours of the afternoon, instead of diving in as soon as he woke up in the morning. He had actually managed to send out two application letters that week (London flats were expensive and his savings wouldn´t last forever), but that was about it.

Victoria had called it progress. Robert new that it was nothing more than mere survival, unworthy of her praise. 

Even four months after his move, his place was still covered in unopened boxes of flat-pack furniture. A manifestation of his reluctance to accept his new living situation and everything that came with it as fact, staring back at him every time he entered the place. The scattered boxes and emptied bottles mocking him for every terrible choice he´d ever made. But what really was doing him in now - months into this newfound so-called life of his - was the lack of human interaction. These days, Victoria´s daily calls, which had grown more and more concerned as time passed by, and the two lines of small talk he shared with a rotating number of delivery men every night were the only reminders he had of the fact that there was indeed a world out there behind his four walls.

 

Julia didn´t push for more right away. She just slid her round, gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose with her index finger and scribbled something into her notebook instead. It made Robert nervous. Made him feel like he hadn´t pulled that line off as well as he had hoped. It made him feel like maybe she knew.

He tightened his jaw and crossed his arms over the pillow. Drew it a little closer, until it was pressed against his chest, because the look on Juila´s face made him feel exposed and that was the only bit of protection he had in here. 

 

“I know that this isn´t easy, but I can only help with whatever is going on with you, if you open up…” Julia said, but it was Victoria´s voice he heard it in. 

It´s what she had been telling him ever since he had crashed on her couch that first night after Aaron had kicked him out. And she hadn´t let it go, even after Robert was out of her sight and trying his best to keep her worries at bay by sounding as convincingly okay as possible on the phone. Victoria hadn´t bought it, of course she hadn´t. She had always been able to see through his facade. So instead of giving up and letting it go, she had started to drop hints about therapy. About how it might be easier to talk to someone who wasn´t so involved in all of it, someone he wouldn´t feel pre-judged by. 

Actually, it was her who had given him Julia´s number in the end, begging him to at least give it a try.

 

It had taken weeks, but in the end he hadn´t been able to refuse his little sister. Especially not since she was the only one still willing to put up with him after everything. His pride wasn´t worth losing that.

Wasn´t worth losing her.

 

“It´s…,”  Robert didn´t quite know how to explain the way he had been feeling for the past couple of months without giving away too much too soon. 

“It´s been really hard,”  is what he settled on.  

 

There was more. Of course there was more. 

 ~~I miss him. I miss my home. I miss my family. It´s hard, because in the end it was all my fault. It´s even harder, because I always knew that I would disappoint him. It was just a matter of time.~~  

 

There was a voice inside his head, that unsurprisingly sounded a lot like his little sister, telling him to let it all out right then and there, just for the slight chance of feeling a little bit better afterwards, a little bit more like himself. It had been a long six months and Robert had grown so incredibly tired of pretending. He was desperate to just once go to bed without feeling like someone was punching him in the gut repeatedly, while his mind was running in circles. Just one night without the image of a crying Aaron clouding his every thought.

He didn´t though.

Because at the end of the day, no matter the pain, he was still Robert Sugden. He was still Jack´s son, which meant that he knew the consequences of letting other people in on your feelings and sharing things they might not be ready to hear far too well. It was going to take him more than twenty minutes to trust the woman in front of him with all of his deepest darkest secrets, if he ever would.

But at least this felt like a start.

 

He wasn´t sure if this would actually help, but he owed it to Victoria to try.

He certainly owed it to Aaron.

And maybe Robert even owed himself the chance of getting better, no matter how badly he had messed things up.  

Especially, if he wanted to keep his hopes of ever being allowed to come home again alive.


	2. Liv

It was only 6 am when Liv woke up. 

Her eyes were still tired and she certainly wasn´t ready to climb out of bed and leave the warm comfort of her duvet just yet, but the Christmas excitement must have gotten to her anyway. She was never up this early, not even if she had school not to look forward to.

Liv had never cared much about Christmas. It had always just been yet another day of the year that made her miss people she could barely remember and long for a family she´d never really had to begin with. Though that lack of knowledge didn´t stop the pang of jealousy she felt whenever her mates from school talked about all their elaborate Christmas family traditions, or when they left to see the extended family in cars packed to the brim with presents and food.

It also didn´t make caring for her mum easier, who always took the holidays especially hard. Liv had learned the hard way to count Christmas mornings that Sandra spent with her at the kitchen table, her eyes unfocused her mind lulled into apathy by sleeping pills, as good ones.

That was until she had come to live with her brother.

Suddenly, she had gotten to wake up to a big cup of hot chocolate with a bit of whipped cream on top, courtesy of Chas, and a Christmas tree littered with mismatched ornaments. The air had been filled with the smell of home-cooked meals and the voices of the whirlwind of Dingles she was surrounded by, singing along to Adele out of key.  
She had gotten to fall asleep with her head on Belle´s lap and Alfie curled around her feet on the sofa in Wishing Well Cottage. Cheeks rosy and a bright smile on her face the next morning, when Robert and Aaron had picked her up and they had spent their walk back to the Woolpack in the cold winter air with an impromptu snowball fight that ended with her and Aaron throwing snowballs into Robert´s then already wet mob of blond hair.

Last year, Christmas had started to feel like family. Like home.

Problem was that Liv knew full-well that this year wouldn´t be the same. One glorious family Christmas seemed to be all she was going to get.

She wanted to be excited for the day ahead. For helping Marlon prepare an actual turkey, for the singing and the boardgames, for a tiny sip of the Dingle´s famous Snowball –  a privilege she had won in a bet against Charity – and the ridiculous paper hats that everyone but Cain would be goaded into wearing.

But instead, she was curled up under her duvet, staring at the date on her alarm clock and couldn´t get the number 7 out of her head.

The 25th of December.

7 months to the day since Robert had walked out of the Mill for good. They had barely moved in, before he was gone.

She didn´t really like to think about him these days.

If there was one thing life had taught Liv so far, it was that there was no point in dwelling on things that were in the past. Especially not if those things were people that you had let into your life and trusted not to betray you, only for them to do exactly the opposite. People you´d thought were yours for good. Family.

She had come to realise that adults had a way of betraying that trust. Of ruining things.

Every now and then though,thoughts of the lanky blond she had considered her brother would enter her mind. It was hard to keep him out, even now that he´d been gone so long - 7 months still felt like an eternity, when you weren´t even 16 yet - because there were reminders of him everywhere.

The entire Mill was practically a memento to Robert flipping Sugden.

At least for Liv it was. Because every drop of paint on the walls and every piece of furniture in their house was something she could tie back to him. To the time when it was just the two of them, while Aaron was in prison.

Like the blue on their living room walls that they had painted together, or the shelf in her bedroom that was still a little wonky, because Robert  had thought himself too clever for the instruction manuals that came with the IKEA flat-pack, which had led to the construction missing a few screws that had turned out to be far more important than her brother´s idiot husband had given them credit for.

(Liv had tried her best to fix it, but there was only so much she could do once the instructions and a few vital pieces had been angrily thrown into the bin, never to be found again under the remnants of the Chinese take-out they had shared the night before.)

Propped up on her CD-Player, there was the Little Mix CD Aaron and Robert had bought her as a belated birthday present.

Sitting on her desk, there was the painting set filled with fancy pencils in all the colours of the rainbow, that Robert had randomly brought home for her one evening, after he had sneaked a peek at one of her sketch books the day before, which she still used for all of her art projects.

And then there was Aaron.

The missing spark in his eyes and the way he´d laughed even less over the past few months than her grumpy, bighearted mess of a big brother usually did, was the most constant reminder of them all.

The most painful one as well.

Once Robert had been gone for good – after hours of pestering, Victoria had told her that he had left for London – it seemed like someone had drained every last bit of happiness out of Aaron and only left a shell of the man she was used to. The big brother she loved more than anything suddenly reduced to red eyes and sweater paws 24/7, only leaving the house for a few hours every day to hide in the portacabin at the scrapyard and snarl at anyone who dared to speak to him, if Adam´s accounts were anything to go by.

Liv growled and dragged herself out of bed, shaking her head in the hopes of getting rid of all the memories that way. It really wasn´t worth thinking about. Sure, she could admit to herself that she still missed Robert, even after everything he´d done, but that wouldn´t change anything.

After having made her way to the bathroom to splash a bit of cold water in her face, she stumbled down the spiral staircase, tip-toeing down the freezing cold metal steps quicker than was safe, chastising herself for not putting on the cuddly warm pair of wool socks that Laurel had knitted for her as an early Christmas present.

Once she´d made it to the kitchen, she opened up a cupboard, the one that still held Robert´s fancy cereal that Aaron had never bothered to get rid off, and pulled out the box she had hid behind it. It was a perfect hiding space, because she knew that Aaron wouldn´t open that cupboard for the life of him. Just like he would quickly change the channel whenever a Marvel movie came on and throw out the part of the morning newspaper that held the crossword puzzle, before he took the rest of it to work with him.

Aaron had gotten good at trying to rid his life of things that reminded him of Robert. 

Liv put the box down on the kitchen table and pulled out the two wrapped presents and the blue Christmas sweater she had bought for Aaron. She had picked up a matching red one for herself that was currently thrown over the chair in her bedroom. The Christmas tree on its front that was lit up by LED ornaments giving the piece of clothing just the right balance between cute and ridiculous. It had been too good an opportunity to pass on, especially since dragging the ones Paddy had gotten the three of them the past year out from the bottom of their closet wasn´t an option.

Liv had gotten good at finding little things to make Aaron smile.

Presents and the sweater were number one and two on that agenda. A proper breakfast for her brother was number three. 

She opened another cupboard and tried to decide between tea and coffee. They would have to be at the Woolpack by nine which meant that Aaron could definitely use the caffeine, but just like her, her brother was more of a tea person when it really came down to it.

“ Oh well,”  she thought,  “it´s Christmas. Might as well go for both.” 

Liv had never understood why life always forced you to pick sides. Tea or coffee. Cats or Dogs. Boys or girls. Gabby or Jacob. Mum or Dad. She had never understood the concept. Couldn´t understand why you always had to pick just one. Why she was always the one who had to lose something. Lose someone.

What she hated most about it, was how life usually had a way of chosing for you.

There was one choice though that Liv never had expected to be as hard as it turned out to be. Frankly, it was one she never thought she´d have to make at all.

Aaron or Robert.  
Robert or Aaron.

Of course, like  always, life had already made that decision for her in a way. Aaron was her brother. Her actual - ”we have the DNA to prove it“ - brother. Which is why the topic had never even come up, once everything had gone to shit.

Because obviously, Liv was going to be on Aaron´s side in all of this. Liv had never even liked Robert to begin with, right? She was probably glad to be rid of his ratface. That´s what people had thought. Chas and Charity and Gabby and especially Aaron. Well, to the extent that Aaron had been able to think about anything other than Robert in those first few weeks that Liv had spent back in the Woolpack, with Aaron unable to keep his own life in order, let alone care for a grumpy 15-year old.

And for the first few days, anger filling every cell of her body, Aaron´s side was exactly where she had wanted to be. She wanted to hate Robert and kick his arse from here to Manchester and back. Punch him in the face for every time he had promised her that they would stick together and be a proper little family. Scream at him until her lungs gave out.

But to her own surprise, that hadn´t lasted long.

While everyone else was still angry and disappointed and cursing Robert to the pits of hell, Liv couldn´t help but think of Robert sleeping on the sofa in the Woolpack under the purple butterfly duvet, when she had stumbled into the kitchen in the middle of the night. Of how broken and sad and tired he´d looked in those weeks Aaron had spent in prison, when he thought she wasn´t looking. Of how he had taken care of her and Noah, how we´d handled the mess she had gotten herself into at school. Of how safe and protected she´d felt when she was crying on his shoulder. 

Suddenly, hating Robert Sugden hadn´t been so easy anymore. 

If only this had been another fight she could have fixed by locking the two of them in a room with beer and curry.

But it wasn´t. And it didn´t matter that Robert looked like death the few times she saw him scuffle to David´s and that Aaron hadn´t left his bed for a week. It didn´t matter that Liv once again felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under her feet, when she had just started to feel grounded and at home. Maybe for the first time in her life, really.

This had been too big of a fight for her to fix.

So she had resigned herself to trying to get Aaron out of bed or off the sofa and making sure Robert was at least still somewhat functioning by checking in on him through the odd text under the pretence of having difficulties with a math problem, or needing his opinion on a specific superhero to win a barney with a boy from school, who was being a pretentious dick.

She put the kettle on then and got a pan out of the cupboard to fry some bacon. 

By the time she heard the door of Aaron´s bedroom open and shut and his feet trampling down the stairs, the table was set for two, a few slices of bacon were sizzling in the pan and next to the small pile of presents in front of Aaron´s plate she had placed a bread basket with thick white toast, just the way her brother liked it.

 

"Mornin´,"  Aaron´s voice was still a bit raspy as he stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. 

"Morning, sleepyhead," Liv smiled at him, “Merry Christmas."

"Ta... What are ya doing up already?"   he asked as he leant against the kitchen counter, his face grumpy as usual. But just average grumpy, not looking like death the way he did when he was having a bad day, missing a certain someone, Liv noted.  "I thought I´d do the whole parenting thing right and make you a proper breakfast."

"Beat you to it, didn´t I?"  she pointed out, raising her eyebrows and nodding towards the kitchen table. She was trying her hardest to pass at least some of her childish Christmas excitement onto her big brother. 

That earned her a small grin off of Aaron.  "Look´s like it. Thanks."

“ Well, don´t get used to it or anything,”  she quipped.

Aaron gave her a proper bright smile then and pulled her into a tight hug.  “Wouldn´t dream of it.”  His arms wrapped around her waist and his chin rested on her head the way it always did. It was something Liv was quite sure she´d never grow tired of.

"Merry Christmas, Liv,"  he whispered against the top of her head, his nose buried in her messy blonde hair.

Liv wrapped her arms tightly around his middle at that and pressed her head into the crook of his shoulder.  “Merry Christmas, Aaron.”

Liv couldn´t bring Robert back. Couldn´t close the gaping hole he´d managed to leave in both of their lives. But she could make damn sure that here brother would spend today feeling loved instead of lonely.

 

And if she sent a quick text to a certain lanky blond in London that night, wishing him a merry Christmas and telling him she´d almost missed his annoying face around the dinner table, no one had to be the wiser.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: [@vicbartons](http://www.vicbartons.tumblr.com)


End file.
